


fringe contender

by redpaint



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Boxing, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Minor Violence, Personal Growth, Roommates, Semi-Public Sex, studying abroad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redpaint/pseuds/redpaint
Summary: ”What happened to you last night?”“Someone punched me.”“Why?”Carlos’s smile gets a little wider. “Because I punched him first.”[Lando studies abroad in Madrid and gets more than he bargained for in the form of a pugilistic flatmate.]
Relationships: Lando Norris/Carlos Sainz Jr
Comments: 38
Kudos: 176





	fringe contender

**Author's Note:**

> this fic contains some descriptions of (consensual) violence in line with the AU. the bulk of this was written before Carlos Did Racism, which i think is really shitty and he should have apologized for. that being said, i've always written rpf with the belief that these characters have little to nothing to do with the actual real people referenced, and so this carlos is very separate from irl carlos. /disclaimer
> 
> big shoutout to rda for cheerleading this one!

It doesn’t take long for Lando to realize there is something odd about his roommate. It’s not really that he’s home a lot, hell, Lando considers himself an aficionado of staying home and so he is in no place to judge. And he’s not unfriendly either, always doing an admirable job of playing along with Lando’s excruciatingly painful small talk. Part of it is that he doesn’t seem to do anything besides sleep, eat plain chicken breasts, go for runs, and do pushups in the tiny living area. Lando doesn’t think he’s ever seen him do work, but Lando himself is gone for hours at a time for class, so for all he knows Carlos is working from home while he’s gone.

The other part is that Carlos has a habit of leaving their cramped fourth-floor walk-up in La Latina late, so late that Lando himself has said goodnight hours before and is just awake playing Minecraft in bed. Lando might blame the schedule of Spanish nightlife but Carlos isn’t dressed to go to any club. Lando would ask him about it, but explaining the question would mean revealing how many little facts about Carlos he’s been absorbing in the month since he moved in and, well, Lando thinks he would die from embarrassment before he got an answer.

Still, it’s not really his business, and Lando is out of the house enough anyway, trying to fill his schedule with enough sightseeing to satisfy his parents when they call and ask if he’s having fun. He goes for drinks with the small group of Brits he meets at international student orientation, spends his days off circumambulating Madrid’s art museums until his feet ache and his camera roll is filled to bursting with ideas for upcoming projects and designs. He lets himself be dragged deep into the subterranean belly of a club he can’t name and lets himself get kissed by a confident stranger with vodka on his tongue. He’s spit back into the street just as the sun is rising and the trains start running again. When he makes it up the stairs to the flat and unlocks the door Carlos is doing pull-ups in his doorway.

“Good morning,” Carlos says, between heavy puffs of breath.

Lando groans and passes out as soon as he hits the mattress.

⁂

Carlos has a seemingly abandoned Playstation shoved behind the TV. He sees Lando eyeing it and warns that all he has is FIFA. Lando glues himself to the couch and doesn’t leave the apartment for the next thirty-six hours. Carlos has more concern for Lando’s self-preservation than Lando does himself, which is how Lando ends up eating a plain chicken breast for lunch rather than having Burger King delivered again. At some point Carlos goes for a run and returns red-faced, his shirt sticking to his front with sweat. Lando makes a point of not staring, but Carlos just stands near the TV, catching his breath.

“Do not turn off the game, I will play you in a minute.”

It’s not really a request, so Lando just nods. Carlos peels off his shirt on the way to the bathroom and Lando misses a shot on a totally open goal.

Lando is a strong believer in the virtues of video games, because if they’re playing then they don’t have to talk, hell, they don’t even have to look at each other. Still, the day quickly slips into night and Lando wonders if it would be weird to point out that this is the longest they’ve ever spent in the same room together. Carlos seems comfortable with the silence, happy to just curse at the screen under his breath in a way that is spiking Lando’s blood pressure. Lando, on the other hand, can practically hear his mother frowning at him for his manners, and spends time thinking of what to say while Carlos scores on him easily.

“So what do you do?” Lando asks, as casually as he can muster. It’s not very convincing. He really should have stayed quiet.

Carlos glances over at him, caught off guard. Lando tries to swerve around his defense but ends up offsides. Carlos shrugs. “Many things. I’ve been a trainer.”

They both have to know it’s an unsatisfactory answer. The rent here isn’t London-expensive but it’s not cheap. “And are you training for something now, or—”

Carlos lands yet another goal in the corner of the net. He leaps up from the coach and shakes Lando’s shoulders a little, hooting in victorious rapture. “Oh, this is a good game. Thank you for reminding me, Lando.”

“Oh, er, no problem.” This is definitely the most they have ever touched. Probably the first. He almost wants to apologize for how bony his shoulder is. He imagines Carlos may consider not lifting an unforgivable character flaw. “One more round?”

Carlos tosses his controller onto the couch. “I have to get ready to leave soon, but another time.”

Lando does not ask _Already?_ , even though he wants to. It’s barely even eight. There’s no reason Carlos needs to know that Lando’s been memorizing his schedule.

There are a lot of things Lando could do. He’s got a commercial design project due next week that he’s barely started. There are plenty of neighborhoods that he hasn’t explored yet, a list of restaurants and bars in his notes app that he’s not sure he wants to go to alone. He could message those people he met, but they haven’t texted since the night they went clubbing and he’s getting the sense that they might be hanging out without him. But he has a life, goddamn it. He does not need to listen to Carlos getting ready in his room and wonder where he’s going. Carlos seems polite enough to tell him if he’d ask, but the prospect makes Lando feel like something’s died in his stomach.

Carlos breezes out of the door half an hour later, with just a “Bye _mate_ ,” and a cheeky smile. Lando picks up the controller and starts a new single-player game.

⁂

He must fall asleep on the couch, because the next thing he knows he’s bolting up off the cushions, his heart racing like he’s just has a close call with a fast car. But it’s just Carlos shutting the creaky front door as quietly as he can. The weak morning light coming through the windows is the only indicator of how long he’s been out.

“Christ, you’re back late,” Lando says, rubbing his eyes. Maybe if he makes a run for it, he’ll be able to crawl into his own bed and fall back asleep quickly. As long as Carlos doesn’t make too much noise.

Carlos just grunts, sounding as exhausted as Lando feels, and turns towards his room. That’s when Lando spots the muddy bruise ringing Carlos’s left eye, from the browbone to his cheek. Carlos clearly notices him looking and turns away further. “I should get some sleep,” he says, tossing a dark duffel bag onto the floor.

Suddenly what had felt like illicit, self-indulgent curiosity becomes urgently important. A bruise like that takes a lot of force. No one ends up looking like that by accident. “What the hell happened to your face? Where were you last night?”

Carlos faces him fully, his arms crossed over his chest, defensive. His well-mannered jock routine is replaced by something a little more steely and unreadable. “I do not ask where you are until six in the morning, will you not do the same for me?”

“No, I won’t. Jesus, there’s a big difference between a hangover and a black eye.” Lando waits for Carlos to explain himself, but Carlos just keeps looking at him with his usual casual intensity, turned a little more wild by the dark bruise. Lando is really unprepared to drag this out of him. “You’ve been assaulted,” Lando says, dragging the words out like Carlos is dumb. “Do I need to call the police?”

Carlos grabs his wrist, even though he wasn’t even reaching for his phone. “No! Don’t do that.”

The panic in Carlos’s voice sparks some half-faded memories of a domestic violence course he’d had to take during first-year orientation. “Carlos if someone is hurting you—” He looks down at Carlos’s hand. There are swollen red welts across the knuckles. The skin is split in some places, half scabbed, disturbingly fresh. “What the hell, did you get into a fight?”

“Is not like that,” Carlos says, withdrawing his hand. He walks past Lando into the bathroom and rifles through one of the cabinets before emerging with a roll of bandages. He holds the end between his teeth and unrolls it with one hand, wrapping the other in quick, sloppy motions.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Lando says, grabbing the roll from him. It shocks them both, but Lando’s filled with a righteous annoyance that keeps him charging ahead. “That’s not how you’re meant to do it.” He points to the toilet. “Sit.”

Carlos, surprisingly, does. In the bright bathroom lights, Lando can see how shit he looks, like a bit of the pride he usually carries himself with is gone. Lando packs a tea towel full of ice and has Carlos hold it over his eye with his uninjured hand. The medicine cabinet is full of things that Lando’s second-year Spanish hasn’t taught him yet, but after a bit of shuffling around, he finds some antibiotic ointment and gauze packets. Carlos puts the other hand on the counter with a resigned sigh. Up close, Lando can see bits of white fiber stuck to the cuts, gone pink from the blood.

Lando could and ask what the hell is going on, but Carlos has his eyes closed and his head tilted back against the wall, the fight gone out of him. “Tweezers?” Lando asks instead, and Carlos gestures towards a drawer.

He has to practically hold Carlos’s hand to get the angle right, turning it this way and that to get a clear view of the damage across his knuckles. It’s slow-going work, but Carlos sits stone-still, whether out of bravery or exhaustion Lando doesn’t know. Lando tries to calm his shaking hands as he finally moves on to the ointment. He smooths it over the cuts in one go, and it’s enough to make Carlos hiss, though he still doesn’t move.

“Almost done,” Lando says, quietly now. He doesn’t really know where this is coming from, this caretaking instinct. He can barely keep himself alive, there’s no reason he should feel the need to play nurse to his strange, distant roommate. It doesn’t help that every place he’s touching Carlos is warm, unnaturally so, and he’s sure he’s blushing, and maybe it’s just the frustration bubbling under everything but he’s way too tired to think about it properly. “Do you mind if I—” Lando says, and urges Carlos’s hand up, so he can finally wrap it in the bandage.

Lando can’t help but watch the muscles in Carlos’s arm as he holds up his hand. “Do I want to see the other guy?” he asks. That at least gets half a smile out of Carlos, which feels like a small victory. Lando checks to make sure the bandage isn’t too tight and releases Carlos’s hand. His fingers feel cold on their own, but he busies himself clearing the gauze wrappers and bits of bloody fiber off the counter.

Carlos sleeps well into the afternoon. Lando desperately wants to corner him for answers, but around noon he gets a message inviting him to go boating on the lake in Retiro Park, and just considering the thought of his mum’s disappointment if she heard he spent three days inside is enough to make him accept the offer.

He returns to the flat feeling those few hours of sleep he grabbed on the couch, nursing the beginnings of a headache thanks to sitting in the sun and drinking nothing but cheap beer. There’s one packet ramen left in the cupboard, and he’s just about to disappear into his room with the steaming bowl when Carlos’s door creaks open. Lando sits back down at their little dining table and waits.

Carlos is wearing a different pair of baggy sweats barely distinguishable from the ones he came home in the night before. He leans against the kitchen counter and raises his bandaged hand. “Thank you for this.”

It’s what Lando wanted to hear, but he still doesn’t know how to respond. He’d at least expected a little sheepishness, an apologetic explanation. He stares down into the swirling noodles in his bowl. “‘S no problem. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“How do you mean?”

“I was the artsy boy in school. People picked fights. You learn how to clean yourself up before any teachers get involved.” Lando doesn’t really know why Carlos needs to know any of that. What is he hoping for, some kind of solidarity between people who’ve had the shit beaten out of them? Bruises have bloomed across Carlos’s knuckles while he was sleeping. Lando never looked anything like that. He had bruises that he hid under his uniform and secretly blamed himself for. “So are you going to make me ask again or what?”

Lando looks up now, unwilling to let Carlos squirm away from the question again. Carlos had been picking at the edge of the bandage, but he stops when he sees Lando looking. “You are very persistent Lando. Are you not afraid of me after I come home looking like this?”

Maybe it was just naivety, but Lando hadn’t really considered that Carlos could have been the aggressor, showing up to the flat with his face showing his fair due. He chokes a little on a reconstituted noodle. “Should I be?”

Carlos stares at him a bit more before breaking, smiling to himself. “No.”

God, Carlos is playing with him, isn’t he? Lando tries not to read too much into the blush he feels creeping up his neck and sits up straighter in his chair. Carlos _is_ going to make him ask. ”What happened to you last night?”

“Someone punched me.”

“Why?”

Carlos’s smile gets a little wider. “Because I punched him first.”

Yeah, he’s definitely winding Lando up now. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“We were boxing. That’s kind of the point, no?”

“Boxing?” Lando repeats, his brain too busy trying to remember what it can from that time he watched Rocky to really come up with anything more intelligent.

“Yes, surely you have heard of it. Two sweaty guys, a ring.” Carlos throws a couple of weak jabs at the air in front of him.

“So is that like, what you _do?_ ” Lando asks. He hates having to claw out these pieces of information, but Carlos seems content to only barely answer his questions and pretend like everything is fine and normal otherwise. How the hell can he be so casual about it?

Carlos shrugs in response. “For now.”

Lando’s noodles are going cold, but he’s lost his appetite somewhat. Carlos turns to the fridge, probably to retrieve another cold, flavorless chicken breast, and it breaks something inside Lando. He’d woken up at an ungodly hour in the morning to piece Carlos back together. He’s tired and kind of lonely and he keeps playing cool and casual when he’s actually freaking out quite a bit and he wants Carlos to stop treating this like a _game._ “Well you must be a pretty shit boxer to turn up looking like that,” he snaps.

And, oh, that must touch something in Carlos, there’s that pride again, flashing in his eyes as he walks out of the kitchen. Lando cleans up his lunch, waves goodbye to his dream of a nap and resigns himself to wandering around the neighborhood until he can calm himself down enough to share the space with Carlos again. He’s about to grab his shoes when Carlos comes back into the kitchen, brandishing his laptop like a shield.

There’s a video playing. It’s dark and low-quality but still legible enough that Lando can make out a raised ring and the crowd of wide-eyed spectators gazing up at it. There’s a large guy with his back to the camera bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, and beyond him, on the far side of the ring, there’s Carlos.

The dim overhead lighting strips away everything about him that Lando might consider soft. His hands are wrapped, no gloves. Maybe it’s just the perspective of the shot, but Carlos looks small, scrappy, especially in comparison to the towering shadow of his opponent. Lando feels a little sick. The tinny sounds of the crowd roar out of Carlos’s laptop speakers and then they’re on each other.

It’s nothing like the slow-motion of boxing movies. It’s not even as cathartic and brutal as Fight Club. Carlos approaches his opponent with tactical patience, his brows set in a firm line. He looks even smaller with his arms close to his face, and Lando knows, intellectually, that he must just be minimizing himself as a target but Lando knows how this ends and he can’t believe Carlos would just let himself get pummeled like that—

But Carlos is the first one to strike, so quick Lando almost misses it, but Carlos swings again, and again, until his opponent is ducking low to avoid the blows. It only gives Carlos better leverage, showering him with punches from above. Something flies out of the larger guy's mouth, and it _has_ to be a mouthguard because the alternative would be too grisly.

They’re closer to the camera now, and Lando can see the sweat shining on Carlos’s forehead and neck, his gritted teeth. The whole spectacle is messy and animalistic and it seethes with a masculinity that Lando has spent his teenage years trying not to get involved in even as he envied it. Lando doesn’t want to look away, not with how Carlos is watching him watch it, but there’s heat mixed with the disgust in his stomach, and that’s dangerous, more so than a well-placed right hook. He pauses the video.

The Carlos in the video, hell, the Carlos sitting across the table from him is hard to reconcile with the guy Lando thought he was living with. Carlos is meant to be weirdly intense and yet somehow still friendly and unfairly hot on his good days. He is not meant to disappear into the night and take apart taller, burlier men with his bare hands. There’s no going back from this, he is sentenced to four more months in this tiny flat with Carlos. He could have kept his mouth shut for the sake of what looked on track to at least be a genial roommate relationship. He still can, maybe, so he looks at Carlos over the top of the laptop. “Fine, you’re not shit,” he says, making sure he doesn’t sound happy about it.

Carlos waggles his eyebrows and leans back in the flimsy plastic chair. “Damn right, _cabrón_.” Maybe there has always been something about him that could have tipped Lando off, if he’d been looking for it. There’s a confidence to him that reads as cockiness, rolling off him here as much as it did in the video, just before he lunged across the ring.

At least there’s a table between the two of them here. The video still doesn’t explain what happened to Carlos; he looked to be on the edge of a crushing victory. The other fighter had barely grazed his jaw once, landing a couple of limp body shots with no grace at all. “So when’d you get that then?” Lando asks, gesturing to Carlos’s black eye. It’s not as red as it was last night, fading to green around the edges.

“He wanted round two in the alley as I was leaving,” Carlos says, casual as anything. “You know, these fights, they’re not exactly legal. Shit happens. I held onto the money.” He shrugs. The money. The duffel bag. Fuck. “At least my legs are still intact. I’m going for a run. See you in a little while, Lando.” And then he’s gone again.

When Lando thought about studying abroad and _leaving his comfort zone_ he had imagined actually speaking Spanish in public, a weekend trip to Morocco, maybe even eating fish if it was in a paella. But this— this is so, so far beyond that. He’s out of his depth and he hasn’t even left his house. Carlos is going to come back eventually and then he’ll have no choice but to deal with whatever soup of emotions that generates in him.

The laptop is still open on the table. Something dark and alluring tells him to unpause the video and watch until the end. He shuts the lid and grabs his keys. He needs a walk.

⁂

It turns out it’s easy to not talk about it. Well, it turns out Carlos is good at not talking about it. The idea that Carlos could ever be _nervous_ about anything is almost laughable, but the longer they live together the more he talks, rambling really, about anything that’s on his mind. It’s nice though, because it distracts Lando from questions like, “Do you, like, enjoy hurting the other guy?” and “Do you know what it feels like to break someone’s nose?” Carlos is still obsessed with his training, but with the semester picking up Lando’s spending more and more time at the library and in the studio anyway. When he finally gets back to the flat Carlos mostly just wants to sit on the couch and comment on his Fornite strats.

They might have next to nothing in common but it’s somehow nothing like it is with the school friends he still sees on odd nights, with their stilted, forced conversation, the pretentious art talk that makes Lando think he maybe should have gone to school for engineering instead. Carlos talks and Lando listens until one day he decides to stop holding back on his insane, high-pitched laughter for fear that Carlos (the constant, unsubtle reminder of masculine achievement, or something) is going to make fun of him. In reality, Carlos _does_ make fun of him for it, but it doesn’t make him want to curl up into a ball and die. Maybe because he’s beating Carlos in FIFA at the time. Maybe Carlos gets to enjoy a different set of rules, and not just because Lando’s seen how he can beat a man to a pulp with his bare hands.

“I am fighting again this weekend,” Carlos says one night, apropos of nothing. He’s actually cooked them both dinner, which Lando wasn’t expecting, and yes it’s chicken breast again but at least this time it’s got some kind of fajita sauce on the side.

“Oh,” Lando says. It’s the first time Carlos has brought the subject up unprompted, and it kind of makes Lando’s brain short-circuit a bit. He’s thought about it constantly, in a low-grade, background way, for the past week and a half. Now that they could finally talk about it, it’s hard to corral his thoughts into an orderly sentence. “Should I, I mean, good luck? Is it bad luck if I tell you to buy more gauze before you go? We’re all out.”

“Thank you for the confidence, I really appreciate it,” Carlos responds, but he’s smiling a bit, like he knows something Lando doesn’t. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come. That is, unless you wanted to go dancing with the tourists at Kapital or play the car soccer game all night.”

Lando should really think before he speaks. Just watching the video of that fight, grainy and out of focus, had dug up a lot of emotions he’s committed to not exploring any further. And hadn’t Carlos dropped that it was illegal? He’s pretty sure his dad wouldn’t appreciate a 3 a.m. phone call from the Spanish police. “Yeah, I’ll come,” he says, before he can change his mind. It’ll make for a good story, if nothing else. Maybe it will finally endear him to the other students at the university, when he recounts it over late-night drinks. He doesn’t even let himself consider the quieter, slightly more nauseating fear, that maybe he’ll _enjoy it_.

⁂

The venue isn’t even announced until a few hours before it’s meant to start, but Carlos claims he knows the area, so they catch a train well past midnight. Lando wears exactly what he imagines he should wear to an illegal underground fight club, namely, all black. He hugs the pole in the center of the car and watches as Carlos bounces his knee the whole way there, his eyes locked on the station map above the door. “Nervous?” Lando asks, more for his own sake than anything else. There’s no one else in their car. The silence will kill him before they make it to the end of the line.

“I have never taken someone else to see a fight,” Carlos says, an uncharacteristic tightness in his voice. “If I lose I am blaming you. For messing with my—” he gestures broadly around himself.

“Your vibes?” If Lando sounds incredulous it’s just because he can’t believe _he_ could be the one throwing _Carlos_ off-balance. “If you want to listen to music or something you can. I won’t be offended.”

“No, that is not it,” Carlos says, and doesn’t elaborate. Lando goes back to fiddling with his phone. His Instagram is full of boomerangs of other people downing flaming shots in darkened bars. He thinks maybe he could have used one himself before they left the flat.

They get off at an unfamiliar station and walk a short distance before slipping between two tired-looking office blocks. The alley is caked in graffiti and lined with a surprising number of people smoking and cradling tall cans of beer. One of them reaches out and claps Carlos on the shoulder as they walk by. Carlos smiles but keeps walking. Lando sticks close to his side and prays that no one tries to talk to him. It’s easy to forget, when he’s spending all his time trying to figure Carlos out a little more, that he’s actually the closest thing he has to a friend in a city full of strangers.

The actual venue is down a flight of stairs, in a low-ceilinged basement. If anyone asked Lando would say it’s a bit on the nose, but, luckily, no one is asking him anything. No one is even giving him a second glance; he’s just another slight, black-clad figure among a sea of others, all watching the empty ring with anticipation. Carlos orders a beer at the makeshift bar before sticking it in Lando’s hand and disappearing into the crowd. It’s all more casual than Lando imagined it would be. With the beer on his tongue, the smell of sweat, elbows poking into his back and people stepping on his toes, it’s one thumping house mix away from just being a nightclub.

Up on the platform a tall, tattooed man ducks under the ropes and steps into the ring, eliciting a wave of cheers from the floor. He humors it for a second, then gestures to quiet it down. Lando strains to hear him, even though he’s projecting over the crowd. He catches bits of words he understands: _first this evening… amateur matches… personal business_. When he’s done the crowd roars again, heralding the two women who enter the ring after him. They look young and nervous, and Lando’s already having second thoughts about this but at least someone’s given them gloves.

It’s over pretty quickly, which is a mercy. One of the girls swings with unbridled rage that seems to stop even this crowd from wanting to cheer too much. The other falls to the ground, protecting her face, and doesn’t get up until someone counts to ten and pulls the two apart. A few more rounds go the same way: clumsy, quick fights, opponents who either snarl as they skulk away from the ring or are welcomed into the adoring arms of their friends. The crowd is getting antsy. Lando is glad he’s not the only one. It’s hard to be invested in whatever beef these people have with one another, and besides, it’s far too easy to imagine himself up there, making a fool of himself and getting hurt for his trouble.

There’s a lull in the action. Someone starts playing bass-heavy music over an unseen speaker. Lando stands on his tip-toes to try and catch a glance of Carlos, but he doesn’t have any luck. The first fighters all materialized from the crowd, but maybe the ones who aren’t amateurs (Lando would hesitate calling Carlos a professional _anything_ , given the schedule he’s witnessed) actually get somewhere to prepare.

Lando downs the last of his beer, and he’s about to go find a table somewhere to dump the bottle when the music cuts out and the crowd cheers again, louder now. More rabid. Lando turns back to the ring and there’s that tattooed guy again, but this time he’s not officiating over the crowd. He’s standing between Carlos and another fighter, apparently talking with great enthusiasm, though Lando can’t hear him over the crowd. Carlos is looking at him intently and nodding along, which is way too much like Lando’s Carlos for comfort. He’s up _there_ , a pedestal and a lion’s pit, stripped down to gym-shorts and a tight-fitting shirt, his hands bound up in white wraps so as to render them solid, unbreakable. Lando came here to watch his roommate fight, maybe, but also maybe he was hoping he would be watching a different person entirely.

The emcee nods to both fighters and turns out to face the crowd. Lando sees his mouth moving, knows he must be shouting something as loud as he can, but there’s no chance of anyone hearing him now. The crowd presses in closer, squeezing Lando up against the guy in front of him. The emcee ducks out under the ropes. It’s just Carlos and his opponent in the ring, standing on opposite corners, sizing each other up like the other guy is so much a piece of meat.

Carlos bounces lightly on his toes, the coiled energy practically radiating off him. He fakes out a move a couple of times, and Lando thinks he might see a dirty smile hidden behind his fists. His opponent moves a little slower, more deliberate. He turns the two of them in a slow, wide circle until Lando can see his face. He’s frowning in concentration. Or maybe it’s concern. Lando almost wants to feel bad for him: he saw what Carlos did to that guy last time. It was brutal.

But then Carlos darts across the ring, landing a punch square against his opponent’s jaw, and the sheer shock of it makes Lando yelp, then cheer, along with everyone else packed in around him.

It’s nothing like the amateur rounds before them. The way Carlos fights feels planned, surgical, even as the round grows more bloody and primal. There’s no wild swinging of fists, just the tactical preparation and release of finely honed strength, reflexes so precise Lando’s almost afraid to blink and miss them. Carlos lands a gut punch, then a set of quick jabs. He ducks out of the way of a searing right hook. Lando’s throat is going to go raw from yelling Carlos’s name. He doesn’t even care that he’s sweaty and tired and almost close enough to the ring to get bled on.

A loud bell times out the round, something the earlier fights never got to. Carlos drops his fists and moves back to the corner, grasping for his water bottle. His hair is already sticking to his forehead with sweat. Lando whoops again, and it must carry enough over the crowd because Carlos looks up like someone’s called his name. He looks confused, searching the crowd, but then he makes eye contact with Lando and he _winks_. The adrenaline and the beer seem to be factory-resetting Lando’s knowledge of how to act at a sporting event to everything he learned from watching his dad watch football, so all he can do is pump his fist and shout, “Yeah!” with manly aplomb.

A hand darts out from between the ropes to grab the water bottle and then the next round begins, Carlos now leading the tentative dance around the ring. Carlos comes in and out of the pools of shadows cast by the shit makeshift spotlights, the light catching on the sheen of sweat clinging to his chest and arms. Lando grips his empty bottle a little tighter.

Carlos looks like a caged cat, ready to pounce. His opponent must sense it too; he moves before Carlos has a chance to strike. It’s a solid uppercut, short and blunt. Carlos’s head snaps back with the force of it, his hands coming up to block too late. The mass of spectators roars their approval. Lando’s stomach churns. Carlos misses another block and takes a punch to the cheek. He readjusts his mouthguard. Lando’s gotten close enough now to see the blood on it.

The crowd is tight, but for once in his life, Lando is happy he’s small. He squeezes through the spectators as best he can, until he finally, _finally_ spots the door. The hulking doorman gives him a sideways look as he stumbles out into the night, but has the decency not to say anything as Lando leans against the icy concrete wall and gulps down air like a man drowned. He must have been holding his breath without realizing it. He can still hear the noise from the basement, but it’s tempered now. Distant enough to be manageable. There’s nothing to transfix him but the crisscrossed graffiti on the sides of the alley. He lets his eyes focus and unfocus on it until his heart rate has gone back to normal and his throat doesn’t feel so tight.

Fuck, if only he had been one of the kids in his program who’d picked up smoking cheap Spanish cigarettes. Then he wouldn’t feel like such a muppet taking a breather from the fight. _No, no, I’m not bothered with what’s going on in there,_ he could say, wordlessly, with each drag. _“I’m not afraid of blood, violence, death. Hell, I’m killing myself right now. Wouldn’t do that if I was afraid, would I?”_

He’s in a bad way if he’s actually having these kinds of conversations in his head. He probably couldn’t even say all that in Spanish anyway, even if there was someone around to question him. Which there isn’t, because everyone is inside, watching Carlos fight. _Watching Carlos bleed,_ and it’s then that he remembers that he’s the only one attending as Carlos’s friend. Everyone else cheered just as loud for the punches that Carlos threw as the ones he took.

Lando checks the time on his phone; it’s nearly two in the morning. A fresh wave of bloodthirsty noise comes from below. The end of the fight? He could leave now and be waiting for Carlos back in the flat with gauze pads and a strong drink at the ready. His feet carry him back through the portal into the stifling basement before he can think again. The ring is empty, not even a spot of blood on the mat to suggest what happened while he was gone. People are milling about between the matches, grabbing more drinks, flagging down their friends, a hectic soup of sounds and faces barely visible in the half-light.

Someone taps his shoulder, making him jump. He whips around and there’s Carlos, beaming crookedly to accommodate a bit of swollen lip. Carlos isn’t lying unconscious on the mat. All his facial features are generally intact, and he’s with it enough to ruffle Lando’s hair before Lando can duck out of the way. The relief floods in, and with it comes the urge to hug Carlos, confirm he’s real and solid under Lando’s hands. Lando doesn’t fight it, even though Carlos is still disgusting and sticky from sweat. Carlos crushes him a bit and pounds on his back with one hand, like he still hasn’t remembered to use less than 100% of his strength.

“ _Yes_ , tío. Hell yes,” Carlos crows in his ear. “Did you _see_ that? Comeback of the century, mate.”

Lando hates to lie, but he doesn’t want to interrupt Carlos’s ecstatic enthusiasm either. “That was awesome, seriously awesome. You’re a machine,” he says, with a non-zero amount of guilt.

Carlos lets go first, because there’s someone shoving a drink in his face, yelling _príncipe, príncipe_. Lando raises an eyebrow as that, but Carlos just accepts it eagerly and downs half of it in one go. Lando shudders as though he’s the one drinking vodka like it’s water. The first sharp shock followed by a lingering burn, like a punch to the face. Carlos carries it well.

⁂

It’s strange to wake up in the morning and find that his life hasn’t really changed in any meaningful way. He still has to scrounge together a breakfast, and respond to the backlog of texts from his friends back home, and he supposed he should probably do his homework as well. He’s not in jail, or been beat up for being too uncool to go to Carlos’s secret fight club. He’s just tired as hell, like we would be after any night out.

Carlos’s lip heals up quick, though Lando notices him eating carefully for a few days. Lando finds a video of the fight on the same account Carlos had first shown him and keeps it open in a browser tab for a few days, unwatched. It stays with him as he goes back and forth from the university, as he looks up references images for his projects and FaceTimes his parents. He finally watches it one day when he’s home and Carlos has gone for a run. The angle is different from what he saw on the floor, closer and more visceral. His palms sweat as he watches the fight progress into the second round. Blood in Carlos’s mouth. Then Carlos pulls himself together and it’s like the other guy never stood a chance. He turns to the crowd when it’s all over, closes his eyes as the adulation of the crowd washes over him.

Lando is deeply, _shamefully_ turned on by the end. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to process what that might mean because Carlos picks just that moment to return to the flat. Lando quickly closes the tab and hopes he doesn’t look too much like a deer in the headlights. The kitchen table covers his sins from view, as long as he doesn’t have to move.

“What are you up to?” Carlos asks, turning simple conversation into a terrifying interrogation without even realizing it.

“Just schoolwork,” Lando croaks out, navigating to a tab with a half-finished paper. Perfect cover, proper spy shit. Call him double-0 dickhead. He’s already gone on the femme fatale anyway.

“You are doing design, yes? Will you ever show me what you make?” Carlos cocks his head, curious in the way that Lando usually equates with a friendly dog. Usually it’s endearing but now Lando really wants nothing more than for Carlos to fuck off to the shower so he can escape to the horny shame cave of his room.

“Yeah, sure, if you want. When I’m done with one of the projects,” Lando says, not sounding totally committed, staring back down at his screen. Carlos seems to take the hint at least and disappears into his room.

So maybe his life doesn’t exactly go back to normal. Because now when he jerks off he has to make a point not to think about the flexion of Carlos’s thighs when he bent low to duck, or the cold smile of victory he flashed at the camera after being declared the winner. He especially doesn’t think about the thin line between fear and arousal that’s demolished every time he sees Carlos fight. It seeps into the day-to-day too. Lando finds himself distracted in class, sketching aimlessly on the edge of the handouts and running over the memories of the night in a futile attempt to recapture the feeling of sheer adrenaline. He’s meant to be designing a travel guide for _his_ Madrid, whatever that means, but he can only draw the shapes of the graffiti that lined that alley and the sailor tattoos on the emcee.

It’s late when he gets back to the flat, but Carlos is still up, watching Netflix on his laptop despite sitting in front of the TV. Lando corners him before he can chicken out. “Can I show you something I designed?”

Carlos pauses the show and nods towards the empty side of the couch. There’s no reason for Lando to be this nervous, but he is. Maybe Carlos will think it’s weird and creepy rather than flattering. Maybe he’ll regret ever having invited Lando into his world if he’s going to act like a fanboy. Lando sits and opens up the file.

It’s a simple logo, with the words _el príncipe_ hand-lettered over a stylized crown. Red and gold run through the design, but of course there are solid-color backups. Now that he looks at it again with slightly fresher eyes, he thinks it looks pretty nice.

Carlos is looking intently at the screen in Lando’s lap. “Is this for school?” he asks incredulously.

He could lie. “No, I was just thinking about the fight, and, you know, if you’re doing this regularly it might be nice to have a logo. Then you have a way for people to remember you. If they remember you they can root for you.” Lando cringes a little at the way he’s selling it. Who does he think he is, Don Draper?

“You want them to root for me?”

Lando is almost offended at the question. “Of course! I’m like, your official hype man now.” All the best hype men can’t watch their charge take a punch without getting queasy, of course. “They’ve got screen printing machines on campus, and fabric paint and everything. It wouldn’t be hard to do your shirt or shorts.”

Carlos looks at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion but smiling a little despite it. “Is this really what you want to be spending your time on while you are abroad? You should be out doing the tourist things, you do not need to be worrying about my brand.”

It’s a fair question, and Lord knows Lando has questioned himself about it enough. Somehow drunkenly eating a kebab after getting pickpocketed in the Plaza del Sol would feel less shameful than the single-minded interest he has in the atmosphere of that basement, the excitement, heat, and revulsion that he keeps coming back to over and over again. He shrugs it off as casually as he can. “I dunno, I have to be on campus anyway. It wouldn’t be too hard.” The screenprinting shop has ridiculous hours. He’ll have to catch an early train.

“Well, if it would not be too hard,” Carlos echoes, more to himself than to Lando. Maybe he really does like it. Lando bites his lip to stop himself smiling too wide and revealing too much. They’re in a rare, fragile balance of power for once, over this little digital drawing. If Carlos knew how much his approval meant it would ruin it entirely.

Lando excuses himself to bed and stays up deciding which color scheme would look best from the crowd.

⁂

Carlos rests one hand on Lando’s shoulder, the other on his hip. If Lando were the one touching Carlos, he knows it would be light, tentative. Anything more would feel like a confession. But Carlos seems to have no such hesitations; he just grasps Lando firmly and maneuvers him into the proper stance. Hip and shoulder back, lean into the opponent, mind the toe-heel line.

“Keep your feet wide. Bend your knees more,” Carlos orders. He’s detached, almost clinical, diagnosing the problems in Lando’s body with an eye on what would keep him intact in the ring. “Now when you punch I want you to breathe out, okay? And tighten your fist as you go.” 

Carlos’s hands are everywhere, like it’s not a big deal. Lando’s so set on holding his position perfect that he can feel himself going tense, the exact opposite of the liquid poise Carlos had oozed during his fight. Carlos just continues the inspection, tilts Lando’s hand this way and that to make sure he’s not gone and stuck his thumb inside his fist and paved the road for a broken wrist.

It’s embarrassing, really, letting Carlos pick apart his form. Even if it’s just them in the living room, with some of the furniture pushed out of the way. Even if Carlos had asked and Lando had accepted. Being the object of Carlos’s intense attention is borderline uncomfortable on the best days. Now it just makes Lando want to crawl out of his skin.

Lando stands up out of his boxer’s crouch and drops his hands from in front of his face. “Maybe we should stop. I’m way too skinny to fight anyway.”

Carlos looks unimpressed. “You have fought before.”

“Yeah but that was a long time ago. Besides, it’s not like they hired a ref and challenged me to three rounds. Good form isn’t much use against a group of kids behind the school.”

Carlos frowns a little but pushes on despite it. He spins Lando around until they’re face to face and rests both of his hands on Lando’s shoulders. “And you still think about them? What you could have done differently? You blame yourself?”

Something cold and sour settles in Lando’s stomach. He never would have put it like that himself, but the clarity of it threatens to bring tears to his eyes. He shrugs off Carlos’s hands and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “And if I do?”

“You need to exercise the muscles that tell you you’re strong. Until you believe it. You have to practice the thought. Right now you are running away from it.” Carlos talks with such absolute confidence that Lando can’t believe it’s the first time he’s said the words. Maybe it’s what his clients needed to hear when he worked as a trainer, if he ever even did.

Still, Lando wants to fight him, wants to lash out against the way his body won’t work or look or feel the way he wants it to. He wants to howl against the sharp blocks that go up in his head when he thinks about what it would feel like to not feel this way. He was going along fine ignoring it all until Carlos asked if he _wanted to learn how to throw a punch_ and then put Lando under the microscope while he himself stood there looking like he’s chiseled out of marble or something. And now Carlos wants to tell him to feel strong?

Lando lets out a shaky breath, trying to reel himself back in from the ledge. “I want to, I just— I don’t want to lie to myself, you know?” He hates the sound of his own voice when he’s been on the brink of crying. “Sorry, you shouldn’t have to deal with all this, I should go for a walk or something—”

“See, you are running.” Carlos is an immovable object when he has his mind set on something. Usually, when it’s just about getting Lando to try odd Spanish foods it might be amusing, even endearing. But he keeps pushing and pushing on this lingering bruise and it just makes Lando want to blow past him and leave the apartment for good, never to return and face this conversation again. “Can I walk with you?”

Lando really just wants to put some emo rap on in his headphones and walk until he’s lost, but saying no to Carlos would feel cruel, not to mention fruitless. It’s nearly evening, the sun hanging low and pouring light down the narrow streets. It’s almost annoying how easily a bit of beauty can ruin a good sulk.

Lando keeps quiet as they go, his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. He’s feeling less prickly, but only just. Carlos seems to throw all cues to the side and keeps talking. “I was not always good at boxing, you know. I wanted to fight since I was young, but my dad didn’t like it. He thought it was too violent, that it would make me a bad man, and so we do not talk about it.”

It’s odd to think of Carlos as someone who used to be young. Underneath the dick jokes and recreational violence and his frankly frightening physical fitness, he seems like an old soul, placid and patient and self-assured.

“When you came to the fight, I almost could not do it. I thought you were going to be afraid, or look at me different. I was still hearing my dad’s words, you know? They stick with you. But I saw you after the fight and you were so happy to see me. And so now when I train I notice when I am telling myself that I am bad, and I stop myself. Either way Lando, I hope you know this is not really about the fighting. I honestly do not care if you can punch the right way. I just see you telling yourself you are not strong. You had to be strong to stop me hiding away in my room and licking my wounds when I got beaten up that first time. Also when you beat me at FIFA.” Carlos adds as an afterthought, like maybe if he can’t get Lando to engage in his weird soul-searching campaign he can at least get him to smile. Another beat. “Anyway, I hope I am not saying too much.”

Lando has to laugh at that, despite the turmoil churning in his gut. Carlos is all earnest, full-throated emotion, devoid of self-awareness, and it makes Lando want to run for the hills as much as it acts like a balm on his frantic nerves. He laughs and it somehow brings up the tears again and it’s all too much and he has to stop and lean against the side of the nearest building, howling like a madman despite his best efforts. He braces himself on his knees and tries to catch his breath. Carlos better regret coming on this walk now. 

Carlos isn’t looking at him. He’s looking up at the sign above the faded bar across the street. There’s a healthy swarm of people crowding the counter and spilling onto the sidewalk, their chatter somehow soothing in its obliviousness to Lando’s entire emotional clusterfuck.

The sun is dipping behind the skyline now, turning the breeze cooler. Carlos looks back over to him and rests his hand on Lando’s shoulder. No twisting and turning Lando’s body into the right shape. The touch simply lingers, exists. A statement without words.

“Have you ever been here?” Carlos asks, after what feels like an eternity.

Lando finally has himself together enough to answer. He wipes at his eyes and clears his throat. “Haven’t, no.” Come to think of it, he doesn’t think he’s ever been down this street before. He thought he was wandering, but maybe Carlos was guiding them along the way.

“They make their own vermouth, and if you need to piss you have to duck under the bar. It is perfect.” Carlos grabs Lando’s hand and pulls him across the street, into the buzzing crowd. Dozens of fragmented conversations fill the space where his thoughts should be, blocking them out for one short, blessed moment. The vermouth is sweet and bitter in turns, and it goes right to his head. Carlos is right, it’s perfect. Maybe he knows what he’s talking about.

⁂

_> Does anyone want to go to Toledo?_

_> Trains are cheap and we could split a cheap airbnb for a night_

_> The cathedral is supposed to be dope_

Fuck read receipts. He should at least have the option of believing that he’s not being willfully ignored.

He buys a ticket for himself anyway. The hostel is crowded and noisy, but it’s easier to snag a table for one with a view overlooking the old city. He tears up in front of The Burial of the Count of Orgaz and eats himself sick on nunnery marzipan while the cathedral bells boom overhead. And there’s no one to run his mouth to but there’s also no one to make him feel small for crying at one of El Greco’s more _pedestrian_ works and he thinks traveling solo might actually be all it’s cracked up to be.

Carlos texts him when he’s on the train back, watching the endless beige countryside slip past the window. _Package came for you. I put it on your bed._

Lando bites his lip before committing to the reply. _Thanks! are u willing to help me out with something?_

⁂

“All of it?” Carlos asks, again, slower this time. Like he doesn’t have as good a command on the English language as Lando does, if not better. Like Lando needs to make perfectly clear what he’s asking for here.

“All of it,” Lando confirms to his reflection. They’ve wedged one of the kitchen chairs into bathroom so Lando can put his head over the sink. He’s got a towel wrapped around his shoulders that’s going to trap hair for weeks.

The clippers buzz and groan like a giant insect, frighteningly loud in the claustrophobic space. Carlos gently grasps Lando’s chin and turns his head to the side, so he can start under his ear. The brush of Carlos’s fingers against his laughable stubble mixes with the first touch of the guard against the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck to send goosebumps down his spine. Carlos has his tongue between his teeth, concentrating hard.

“You know you can’t really fuck this up right? Like whatever you do will be lightyears better than what I could manage,” Lando says, bumping Carlos with his knee.

Carlos bumps him back as hard as he can without jostling his target. “I will shave I Love Carlos into your head and then we will see how bad you think I can fuck it up.”

“You better not,” Lando warns, but then he can feel the hair falling away, the coolness of air close to the scalp. Carlos looks less concerned now, looking down at Lando with a small, supportive smile. The clippers mow through his hair in repeating, meditative passes. He closes his eyes. Carlos sucks in sharp breaths whenever he flinches, so he makes sure to keep still.

“Alright, is all done,” Carlos says, brushing shorn hairs off Lando’s scalp with brusque little flicks that make him shiver. He’s afraid to look, but Carlos at least looks proud of his work. The person that gazes back at him in the mirror is a stranger, at least for a few seconds. Then his eyes adjust, and he computes that yes, this is him, no going back. “What do you think?” Carlos urges from behind him.

Lando runs a hand over his head, feeling the soft-prickly texture of his hair for the first time. Carlos is busy stuffing the clippers back into their bag. “It’s… different,” Lando says, looking for the words. He’s too shocked to really judge how much he likes it, but he’s not lying, it _is_ different. There’s a power to just deciding he wanted it all off and then seeing the hair in the sink. It’s also the first time he could describe himself as looking _tough_ , and that’s despite his acne and his terry-cloth cape. “I think it’ll grow on me.”

“I think it makes you look cool. Very Jesse Pinkman, _dude_.”

Lando snorts. “And you can be Walter White, ‘cause you’re so fucking _old_.” He has to slide off the chair to duck the ensuing smack to his arm. Carlos lets out a long-suffering sigh, all dramatics even when it’s just the two of them, boxed in by the cracked tile walls of the bathroom.

Lando can’t stop feeling his head all day, making sure it’s really gone. The absence is startling every time he goes to brush his fringe out of his face. He eventually occupies his hands by working on a new design for school, scribbling away on his tablet at the kitchen table. Carlos passes by on his way to the fridge and rubs Lando’s head affectionately. Warm static rolls through Lando’s limbs. It’s appallingly pleasurable. Lando ducks down into his hoodie, away from the offending touch. If he burrows deep enough into the fabric, maybe Carlos won’t read into the blush on his cheeks.

For once he feels like he finishes the assignment too soon. Now that it’s done he has nowhere to put his manic, anticipatory energy. The football match Carlos had been half-watching ends; now there’s just the post-game commentary playing softly on the TV. Carlos is deep in his phone, doing, well, whatever it is Carlos does when he’s not training or giving Lando shit. Lando is still kind of unsure about the details.

“Carlos?” Lando asks. He tries not to feel too pleased about how quickly Carlos drops his phone and looks up.

“Yes?”

“I was thinking about that fight we went to. Those rounds at the start, how do people end up there?” One day he will learn to just say what he means. At least self-awareness is the first step.

Carlos doesn’t seem to care either way. “It depends. The organizers like to have people take out their problems there instead of on the street, where no one could stop it if it gets too serious. A lot of people accused of stealing boyfriends and girlfriends and things like that.”

“So you need to get challenged?”

“No, if there aren’t too many they will let anyone fight, if they know what they are getting into. That is how I started with them. I lost. Badly.” Carlos looks into the distance for a second, like he’s reliving that first fight. The edge of his mouth quirks up into a smile. “Why are you asking?”

Lando makes himself look at Carlos properly, not over his shoulder or out the window or anything. “I was just thinking that maybe I might like to try it, you know, if I can.”

He can see the puzzle pieces coming together in Carlos’s head. His eyebrows shoot up when it all snaps into place. “Is _that_ why you made me shave your head? Jesus, I thought you were just going through a breakdown.”

“Wait, do I seem like I’ve been having a breakdown?”

“Well, no, but now that you say you want to fight I am not so sure. You didn’t even want to learn the basics.” Lando’s cheeks burn, because he knows Carlos is right. Well, time to swallow that last bit of pride.

“Yeah, I was also hoping maybe you could show me again. I’ll be a top student this time, promise.”

Carlos is smiling inscrutably. Lando would give anything to know what Carlos is thinking about when he smiles at Lando like that. “Okay, this time there is no complaining. I will ask the organizers about fighting next time. When do you leave again?”

“Mid-December.” Less than two months away. He doesn’t think about it because every time he does he feels sick.

“Mid-December, okay. We will start tomorrow, we have time to run before you go to class.” Carlos nods to himself, pleased. When did Carlos memorize his class schedule? At least he doesn’t feel like the only creepy one any more.

Lando gathers up his laptop and tablet, ready to scurry away to his room for several long hours of mulling over what he’s really signed himself up for. “Sounds good. Thank you— for everything.” He is practicing thinking he is strong.

“Goodnight, Lando,” Carlos says, smiling like _that_ again, only this time it’s smaller, softer, like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Lando takes hold of that bit of gleaned knowledge, keeps it close like a secret. When he lays down in bed, he finds himself smiling too.

⁂

There’s a flicker of red glove in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t even have to think to duck; his body acts on its own now. Enough practice and soft bats to the cheek after missing the cue will do that. The first few sessions were trying enough: frustrating and tiring and non-negotiable, even when school left him feeling tired and short-tempered. He just wanted to veg out on the couch and inhale a family-sized bag of crisps, but Carlos would be standing there, tutting, “No, up, _vamos_. You have to do it when you don’t want to, or else it is just masturbation. You’ll feel better when we’re done, come on.”

And after a couple weeks of cursing Carlos’s name every time his muscles ached or he threw a flimsy punch or had to stop, red-faced, in the middle of the sidewalk as Carlos jogged onwards, it stopped sounding like such a bold-faced lie. Years of primary-school gym class had ground in an instinctual humiliation whenever he exerted himself too hard, just further proof that he was too small, too scrawny, too _girly_ to even be trying. But Carlos has some kind of monklike patience, and when Lando stops projecting his own bullshit for a second he can see Carlos’s coaching and guidance for what it is: soft and genuine in a way he's never thought he deserved before. He starts to look forward to it, jogs up the stairs at his metro stop to make it back from class a little sooner, a little more prepared. It turns out that muscle shows itself pretty quick when you’re skinny. His knuckles ache a bit, but he flexes them under the table in class anyway. It’s the physical proof that he is _doing something_ , goddamn it.

His footing gets a little more sure. Even though Carlos is still fairly gentle when they’re sparring, it gets more real by the day, and he learns to take a hit without wobbling. Now when he can’t quite land a combination like he wants to he doesn’t collapse inward into mute frustration. He breathes through it like Carlos showed him and tries again. He can see himself pulling it off in his head. Sometimes, by the end of the sessions, when they’ve propped open their sad little windows to let the evening breeze in and they’re both sweaty and exhausted, Lando will stop throwing jabs and just tackle Carlos to the ground, laughing as they collapse in a pile. He doesn’t know when touching Carlos stopped feeling like grabbing a hot pan, but what is boxing if not trying your best to touch your opponent, over and over again?

He catches an early train and spends the ride stretching out his neck and wrists as best he can, ignoring the stares of the other commuters. Carlos’s sweatshirt and shorts turn out better than he could have expected, considering he has no budget and only understands half of the words in the instructions for the screen printing machine. He folds them up with unnecessary care and stashes them in his backpack. Carlos will probably throw them on the floor somewhere, or crumple them up in a gym bag, but for now, they’re a gift.

Carlos doesn’t throw them on the ground; he wears the sweatshirt around the flat like a second skin. Lando catches him twisting around in the bathroom mirror to take a selfie with the design. It’s cute, but then the stiff ink on the shorts rubs up against Lando’s skin the next time they end up wrestling on the floor he doesn’t know why _that_ does it but his dick throbs in warning and he has to scramble back on the floor, away from Carlos and the body heat that suddenly felt scalding.

Luckily Carlos seems to expect weirdness from him at this point and doesn’t question it, just hauls himself up and starts rooting around in the kitchen for something nutritious and terrible for them both to eat. The date of the next fight was just announced. Two weeks, location to be announced. Carlos said they found someone he can fight. Lando stares at the ceiling and breathes like he would if he were taking punches.

⁂

Carlos pulls him through the crowd and into the makeshift warm-up rooms at the back of the grotty warehouse. Lando figures he’s lucky to get a room at all, considering it’s technically Carlos’s and he’s just sharing, but the fluorescent overhead lights feel penetrating and sickly in comparison to the dim haze surrounding the ring. Carlos had looked so nervous when Lando went to watch him fight. Lando can’t imagine he looks much better now. His nail beds are ripped to shreds, and he’s pretty sure he woke up with a stress rash. He’s been looking in the mirror and telling himself that he’s strong, but right now he feels far from it.

Carlos watches him pace up and down the length of the room and doesn’t say anything. He’s tapping his lower lip in the way he does when he’s about to gently correct Lando’s form.

“Don’t look at me like that. If I don’t know something by now there’s no way I’m going to remember it when I’m fighting.”

Carlos raises his eyebrows. “I was not going to tell you anything.” 

Lando snorts at that, slouching against the wall and finally letting himself relax for a moment. The wraps around his hands dig into the skin slightly, but the steady pressure is grounding. When he makes a fist it feels solid, heavy. The crowd outside the room is growing louder, insistent, mixing with the rush of blood in his ears to form a steady roar. He isn’t even in the ring yet.

“What?” Lando hates the edge of concern in Carlos’s voice. He doesn’t want to be coddled, especially not now.

“I, I just feel kind of stupid, you know. Why did I think I could do this?” He stutters through it, his pulse starting to pick up. Why can’t he just _go_ already? The wait is going to kill him.

“Fuck that,” Carlos spits, vehement enough that Lando looks up from the floor. “You spent too long getting yourself right to give up on yourself now. Do you know what I am seeing right now?” Lando shakes his head. “I am seeing a Lando I haven’t seen for a long time. You are not him any more.”

Lando wants to contradict him: he _is_ thinking about everything Carlos had taught him, all the technique he’d drilled into his body until it was muscle memory. Then the thundering background music cuts out, and the ambient noise turns from chatter to cheers. A woman holding a clipboard opens the door without knocking and looks between the two of them. _”¿Listo?”_ she asks, then leaves without waiting for an answer. Lando forces himself to stand up straight. He shakes out his arms. Just like back in the flat, just like if it was only him and Carlos.

Carlos stops him with a hand on his chest before he can slip out of the door. “You’re going to be a beast out there.”

Lando’s never been good at taking a compliment at the best of times, let alone before showing a room full of tipsy people what it looks like to get your ass handed to you. “You’re not worried that I’m going to embarrass you?” he asks, smiling weakly.

Carlos just crosses his arms over his chest and looks Lando over, from his patchy shaved head to the worn-out sneakers he thought best approximated boxing shoes. Lando’s sure he looks like someone’s kid brother who’s gotten in too deep with the older kids, playing tough. But Carlos is smiling at him, lopsided like the crown in the logo Lando painted on his sweatshirt. “No way, I’m just worried you’re going to show me up. I’ll need to watch my back.” He pauses. Lando reaches for the door handle. “I’ll be cheering for you,” Carlos adds. Hey, at least someone will be. Lando leaves before Carlos can see him start shaking.

The walk up to the ring is a daze of sweaty bodies, poorly-illuminated steps, and strained shouts from the emcee. Lando has to blink when he emerges into the harsh spotlights. He can barely see anything beyond the ropes, just a shifting mass of people that move with the same threatening, rolling pulse of ocean waves. Someone’s handed him gloves, which make him feel silly and out of proportion. They didn’t have any to practice with at the flat. Carlos never used them.

In the other corner of the ring is a short, stocky man with long hair pulled into a bun. It’s strange to make eye contact with him; Carlos had mentioned a name offhand, when the fight had been finalized, but the opponent in Lando’s dreams had always been anonymous, looming in the darkness. He’d gotten good at staring at Carlos’s face and reading it for the signs that told him to duck and block. That was the only face he was used to seeing, up close, his knuckles aching, heart pounding. The other guy looks like anyone he might see on the street. It’s off putting, sure, but why does he think knowing the guy would make this any easier?

The emcee stops shouting and hauls them to the center of the ring to touch gloves. It’s gone by so fast Lando hasn’t even had a chance to look for Carlos in the crowd. Shit, his palms are sweaty underneath the gloves and the wraps. The other guy looks nervous too. Everyone else slips out of the ring. Back to his corner. Someone on the floor opens a beer and the spray grazes the back of his leg. He re-checks his stance, brings up his guard. God, these gloves reek. The bell rings so loud, he jumps.

The other guy steps closer and winds up a messy uppercut. Lando ducks, sidesteps, and swings out for a punch that just bounces off his opponent’s shoulder. The contact feels limp, impotent. He can still hear Carlos’s voice, but disappointed now. Punch _through_ the target, don’t let up before you even reach him. Lando can feel his cheeks getting red behind his gloves. Another dodge. He’ll have to punch again, but avoiding is so much easier. With his hands up by his face, nobody, not him, not the audience, can see the truth of his strength.

Is he really that different from the person he was when he first saw Carlos fight? The sight of a hard punch doesn’t make him feel sick any more, sure, but a few weeks of playing Rocky with Carlos haven’t made him some kind of top contender. He’s meant to be proving something to himself here, but what if he’s all wrong?

The other guy is squaring up again, and Lando should really be clearing his head, but Carlos’s voice is there, a steady presence that he just can’t shake. _You need to exercise the muscles that tell you you’re strong. Until you believe it._ Lando closes his guard and tightens his fists for good measure. He roots himself down through his sneakers and finds the grip there, like he would if he were barefoot in their flat. The clouds of cigarette smoke that blow over the crowd could be the breeze outside their window.

Maybe it’s just animal instinct, but after that everything outside the ring seems to go quiet. He breathes into it, and before he knows it the other guy is on him. Lando doesn’t even need to watch his face; his punches swing wildly, flying through Lando’s peripheral vision long before they land. He ping-pongs between Carlos’s voice in his head, reminding him _feet wide, shoulders turned, punch straight,_ and the constant stream of sensory information he’s using just to stay on his feet. It should be overwhelming, but instead it feels like a carefully choreographed dance, tiptoeing the line of chaos. He tries for a short jab but it’s blocked easily, glancing off his opponent’s gloves. Back to guard then, scanning for another opportunity. It doesn’t take long; the other guy leaves his side unprotected for just a moment and then Lando is _there_ , the force of the impact running up his arm like electricity. His opponent overcompensates, just like Lando hoped he would. He lands another quick, solid punch on the other side.

It’s hard to believe he is actually doing this. His body, so unruly for so many years, actually does what he wants it to. It does this thing that feels so barbaric but has every cell in his body singing. It turns off the part of his mind that only thinks in terms of _should_ s, pure action and presence, a meditation timed in blood.

The other guy takes the punches well; Lando catches a glimpse of a sharp grin behind his gloves. Lando lets himself smile a little bit too, bouncing on his toes, sizing up the next opportunity to strike. He’d always thought of strength as tension: flexed muscles, solid and unyielding. But now he flows, dodging another sloppy punch and being thankful for the core muscles that keep him balanced. Another split-second opportunity— a punch to the jaw that lands with a satisfying thud. It’s hard to ignore the cheers that one gets. His opponent spits on the mat. Lando doesn’t look to see the color.

How long have they been fighting? The amateurs only get extended single rounds: that’s about how long they can keep this up anyway. He’s as focused as he’s ever been, but his arms and shoulders are starting to ache. He would give it all until the end of the round and let the organizers scrape him off the mat after, but it’s a ring after all. If he runs out of gas there’s nowhere to run.

Lando glances off to the side, where he thought he had spotted a countdown clock earlier. He knows it’s a mistake as soon as he does it. The other guy senses his distraction and pounces: one hard blow to the stomach, then one to his cheek. It’s the hardest Lando’s ever been hit; even grade-school bullies pulled their punches a little bit. It makes him gasp, until another punch snaps his jaw closed and makes his head ring. He backs up in quick, sure steps, just like he’d practiced. The other guy follows, a little less graceful but with the confidence of a predator.

He hits the ropes sooner than he thought he would. Fuck, he’d watched videos of enough fights to know this wasn’t good. He’d also somehow managed to back himself into a corner all on his own, his path on both sides quickly cut off by his opponent. His pulse thunders in his ears. He braces himself for the wave of self-loathing, the one that always comes with failing clearly and publicly, but it doesn’t come. It’s clear what he needs to do: pure defense until the end.

Punches fall from every direction, but he keeps his guard up and stays protected, dodging as best he can in the small space. He even manages one body shot when the other guy gets cocky and takes his time winding up a hook. It’s nothing beautiful, more desperation than anything, but it’s not giving up, that’s for sure. He can actually see the countdown clock over the other guy’s shoulder now. Only a few seconds to go. He ducks another punch, then takes one to the shoulder. The bell rings. His opponent drops his fists like lead weights. Lando does the same. It’s anticlimactic except for the roar of approval from the crowd, who slap the mat and hoot as the emcee steps back into the ring.

It’s clear to Lando that he’s lost long before the emcee even consults the judges. It doesn’t matter. He feels light, like he could float away, and maybe it’s just the adrenaline going to his head but it’s sheer exhilaration, the razor-sharp joy of being alive and being able to _feel_ it. There’s something wet on his face and doesn’t care if it’s blood or snot or tears. He doesn’t care if the crowd is cheering for the other guy, who’s beaming with his glove held aloft by the emcee. Even in defeat, Lando feels fearless. He feels powerful. If this is what it’s like to lose, he can’t imagine what it’s like to win. Carlos gave up everything for that feeling.

They’re dismissed from the ring without any extra fuss, considering they’re just the opening act. Lando descends the stairs, his legs shaky from adrenaline. He’s immediately besieged by a wall of people cheering and pounding him on the back, but they’re all secondary to Carlos. Carlos, who is standing there with a towel and more water and a big dopey smile and who doesn’t complain when Lando launches himself forward into a hug. Carlos holds him so tight Lando think’s he’s liable to snap, except if anything he’s hugging back harder and Carlos feels so good, so solid against him that his eyes start welling up and he needs to get back to the warm-up room _now_ , before he loses what’s little tough guy cred he just earned.

The crowd parts for him, or maybe it’s for Carlos, but either way he rushes through, toweling himself off as he tries to get his heartbeat back to normal. Carlos is close behind, guiding Lando forward with a hand on his back. It’s probably unnecessary but it feels grounding, and he almost wants to complain when they reach the room and that hand disappears.

Carlos looks a bit wild, like he had after winning that fight last time. He’s fixated, leaning against the wall and watching Lando unwind his wraps and gulp down water. “You were so good up there, I could see you remembering what I taught you. That hook to the face was deadly, man. I really thought you had him—”

“I wish I could have won it for you,” Lando admits, surprising himself. It’s not guilt; he just can’t imagine how Carlos might be smiling if he’d come out on top. It might be wide and bright enough to light up that whole smokey warehouse. Lando’s not sure he could endure the full strength of Carlos’s beaming pride, but he’d like the chance to try. He’s stronger now.

Carlos cuffs him on the shoulder. “Do you know many fights I lost when I started? No, no, you did good.” Lando has to look away; he can feel tears threatening his eyes again. Carlos hisses when he turns. “Looks like it hurts,” he says, grazing his thumb over the angry red splotch on Lando’s cheek. It _does_ hurt, but that doesn’t explain why Lando wants to lean into the touch. He doesn’t care if it smarts. But that’s dangerous territory, and he knows he’s not thinking straight, his mind still running at lightning speed.

With his blood up, every bit of skin feels twice as sensitive. Even the shitty body spray Carlos douses himself in smells good when he’s like this. It’s as though the fight is still lingering on him, all action and intensity with no thought for consequences. Lando closes his eyes and rests his forehead on the cool concrete wall for just a moment, willing himself back to earth, but all he can think about is how Carlos’s hand has dropped to the back of his neck. When he opens his eyes, Carlos is staring back at him. His lips are pink, like he’s been biting them.

Fuck it, self-control is just another thing Lando can say he’s lost in Madrid. He grabs Carlos by the shoulders and stands up on his toes to kiss him, rougher, needier than he’s ever let himself kiss anyone before. He’s used to lacing his affection with apologies, but now all doubts are off. He feels like he could just as easily take a bite out of Carlos as kiss him. The sheer animal want is almost scary, but there’s power in knowing what he wants. Carlos makes a small, surprised noise in the back of his throat, but then his hands come up to hold Lando’s hips and he’s meeting Lando’s frenzied kisses with his own.

Carlos is quick to lean down to Lando’s level and push him up against the wall, one hand running up under Lando’s sticky undershirt. The touch feels so good, lingering and warm and nothing like the cold graze of a punch. Lando groans. Had Carlos been nervous, watching the fight? Had desire uncoiled itself inside him and reared up until it was clawing at his throat? When he waited by the side of the ring, did he imagine following Lando back to this room and doing _this_? 

Carlos leans in close so his lips just graze the edge of Lando’s ear. “I know how it is after the fight. To _need._ ” Lando whines, the soft tickle of Carlos’s breath and the hand on his stomach not nearly, enough, not when his whole body feels like it’s on fire, every inch either aching or touch-hungry. Carlos is right, he’s so fucking right. Did he know they would end up here? “I’ve wanted this so bad, since you came to that first fight, fuck, before. But when I saw you after—” he rolls his hips into Lando’s thigh, “It was so hard, you were touching me—“

“Should’ve said something.” Lando’s voice is quiet and tight and so, so, far from anything dignified.

“I couldn’t, I saw you were scared. But now Lando, you’re fearless.” It may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Lando can’t imagine being afraid now, not even in this grimy little room where anyone could walk in at any time. The only thing to fear is losing Carlos to his own fight and the world beyond the flimsy door.

“Aren’t you up next?” Lando asks, pulling Carlos closer regardless. He’s a little proud of how easy it is, Carlos and his pounds of muscle giving way to Lando’s touch. They’ve never been this close standing up, always a fist’s distance away or otherwise wrestling on the floor. There’s no way anyone could mistake this for fighting now, not when Carlos’s hand is sliding under the waistband of Lando’s shorts, rough calluses brushing over the head of Lando’s cock and making him shiver.

“I have waited too long. This won’t take much time,” Carlos growls. Lando wants to protest the implication, but then Carlos pushes his shorts down and starts kissing his neck, and Lando realizes he’s actually much closer than he thought.

A few months ago, Lando had never thought that having to fight would make him feel anything other than weak and insignificant, that it could switch every nerve _on_ , turning his body into a dazzling starfield of sensation that orbits around Carlos’s skin on his. He could blame it on Carlos, all of it. Dragging him down into this murky underworld, teaching him how to throw a punch and take one, seeing Lando’s snarling post-fight energy and meeting him with his own. He can blame Carlos’s long eyelashes and his ridiculous arms and those lips that Lando always thought looked soft. In reality, he knows that they’re both guilty as sin. Lando’s done more than his share to get them here, writhing against each other as the crowd shouts for blood on the other side of the wall. There’s a bruise on Lando’s cheek, strength in his arms and in his head. His dick is sliding, sweat-slick, through Carlos’s fist. It’s a bit of a nasty tableau, but it’s a good one.

He leans his forehead against Carlos’s shoulder, breathes in Carlos’s scent even as he pants into the fabric of his sweatshirt. Carlos chuckles at that, biting now at the vulnerable junction of Lando’s neck and shoulder. There’s no doubt that Carlos is going to leave a bruise, a twin to the one on his face. Lando has no guard up now. He pushes into the sting rather than dancing away from it. Carlos kisses the spot when he’s done. “I’ve been thinking about how you will look when you come. Are you going to show me?”

Carlos’s fingers are sticky from the precome he’s rubbing into the tip of Lando’s cock. They’re sticky and tight and rough and they’re robbing Lando of his already tenuous grasp on the English language. He nods frantically, grasping at Carlos’s shoulders and letting his fingers dig in. He wants Carlos to know how good this feels, how perfect. How he wants to put his hands on every part of Carlos’s body but right now all he can do is focus on not falling over. His toes are curling in his sneakers. Carlos spits into his hand for good measure, and that’s what does it— the thread of spit glistening on Carlos’s lower lip and the way the extra lube lets Carlos jerk him that little bit faster.

Lando makes an embarrassingly high pitched noise as a warning, but Carlos doesn’t let up. He just pushes Lando back against the wall by the shoulder and strokes him through it, until they’re both filthy with come and Lando’s legs tremble so hard he thinks he might collapse. Lando’s eyes are screwed shut but he _knows_ Carlos is staring at him, in that strange, hungry way that maybe makes more sense now.

“Jesus _fuck_ , Carlos,” Lando murmurs, slumping against the wall. The adrenaline crash leaves him feeling boneless and spent. Carlos’s hands leave him for a second; there’s a shuffling sound and then a tissue being pressed into his hand. Lando peeks out from one eye. Carlos has cleaned himself up and has moved on to wrapping his hands, something Lando’s seen him do dozens of times at this point. It’s a hard left turn back into familiar territory, but Lando’s sex-addled brain manages to find something about it sexy. Maybe next time Carlos will let Lando do it for him.

Carlos catches him looking and smiles, perfectly self-satisfied. “You alive over there, Lando?”

“Yeah, I’m— yeah.” Lando gets his clothes right in start-stop motions. All of the grace he felt in the ring is gone, all thoughts replaced by the memory of Carlos’s hands, his breath, his voice, the desire that seemed to white out everything else and reduce his world to the millimeters between them. He’s lucky he has the capacity to even put his dick away, since the woman with the clipboard comes in without knocking again, holding up two fingers in Carlos’s general direction before disappearing again.

Carlos pounds his fists together to check the wrap. Seemingly satisfied, he yanks the sweatshirt over his head. His hair sticks up in random places. It makes Lando’s heart jump into his throat. Lando hauls him in by the front of his shirt before he can head for the door, tilting his head up for another kiss. Carlos obliges, lingering on Lando’s lips before leaving a soft peck on his unbruised cheek. Lando can feel Carlos half-hard against his stomach, and as much as he wants to drop to his knees and return the favor, he pulls back. There’s a crowd out there waiting for Carlos. He can’t be selfish.

He gives Carlos a soft push towards the door. “Don’t get too hurt or anything, I need to be able to get you off afterwards.”

Carlos rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. I will keep it in mind.” Then he’s gone, leaving Lando alone in this little room that smells like sex.

Lando follows him back into the dark warehouse and fights for a spot near the ring. It’s a suffocatingly tight crowd, but he couldn’t care less. Carlos wins, of course he does. He has his opponent down in two easy rounds, and before he turns to soak in the audience’s raucous adoration he grabs the sweatshirt Lando had painted for him and holds it up, pointing to the design that proclaims his right to the throne.

At least this time they make it outside before the need to touch becomes too strong to ignore. They make out around the corner, half-hidden behind a road sign. The quicker they get back to the flat, the sooner they can be naked, but if Carlos can wait then Lando is satisfied to stand here and kiss him until his lips hurt, out under the hazy night sky for the whole city to see. He knows what they look like, a blur of bruises, eager hands, and sweaty, dirty clothes. He’d dare anyone to fuck with them. The night is _theirs_.

As the first rays of sun come through the window in Carlos’s bedroom, Lando thinks the morning could be theirs as well.

⁂

It’s fucking _cold_ in London, which, _duh_ , it’s January, but it’s just another reason for Lando to resent being back. The studio is really just a glorified warehouse with piss-poor insulation, so he leaves the oversized sweatshirt on while he grabs the gloves from his bag. They still smell like rubber and industrial chemicals, a Christmas gift to himself. His phone buzzes at the bottom of his bag; Lando rushes to check it, even though the instructor is calling the class to circle up.

_> Fighting tonight. Wish me luck?_

_you dont need it <  
good luck <  
call after? <  
;) <_

He drops his phone back in the bag without waiting for a response. The answer is going to be yes. It makes his heart skip in anticipation. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirrored wall, with the crown logo emblazoned on his chest. He’ll wear it if they video call— Carlos likes to see him in it. Maybe one day he’ll earn a reputation of his own, one that warrants a nickname like _príncipe_. For now he just stands up tall, nods at himself in the mirror, and heads for the ring.

**Author's Note:**

> fringe contender - "This usually refers to a lesser-known or low-ranking fighter who is about to break into the higher rankings, but doesn’t typically pose much of a threat."
> 
> i've wanted to write an AU along these lines for AGES, and i'm so glad it finally happened. the idea was heavily inspired by [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/448095) mcr fic (lol), though i haven't reread it since like, 2014. sometimes drivers post boxing workout videos and it sparks old memories, you know?
> 
> (limited) research on underground fight clubs came from [here](https://theundefeated.com/features/rumble-in-the-bronx-underground-fight-club-photos/) and [here](https://uproxx.com/life/underground-boxing/).
> 
> this has been my quarantine activity for the past few weeks. i'd love to hear your feedback!
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](https://redpaint.tumblr.com/) if you'd like - or check out the [moodboard](https://redpaint.tumblr.com/private/615536978261311488/tumblr_QL5IN65HdXHNNqljS) i made while procrastinating writing this


End file.
